


Rosemary hedges

by Hermit9



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Labyrinth - Freeform, Prompt Fill, Sam Winchester's Hell Trials, Sick Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7524790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the dailyspnpromts : Dean rushes into a maze to hunt down a monster, ahead of Sam. Evidently, he doesn't come out for a while and Sam gets worried so he rushes in after. When they finally find each other, one of them is not in the best state.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rosemary hedges

**Author's Note:**

> The [prompt](http://dailyspnprompts.tumblr.com/post/145375254282/t-generic-oneshot) brought to mind the short story " _A Lunar Labyrinth_ " by Neil Gaiman. It's part of his collection [Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances](http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0062330322). This probably makes more sense if you've read the story before hand (or listened to it. The audiobook version is delightful). Go ahead, he's a much better writer then I am. 
> 
> Set in season 8, after the 2nd trial.

The town was small enough that the library was housed in the elementary school, which meant lower-than-average tables and chairs sporting neon-colored gutted tennis balls on each leg to reduce the noise as they dragged on the linoleum-covered concrete. It made the hunter feel out of scale. He was acutely aware of his size, his legs and arms in awkward angles, in a way he hadn’t been since the fairy case when he was Soulless. At least then he hadn’t cared much. This time his hands felt gigantic and he kept making half-baked lilliputian jokes to himself.

Sam sighed and stretched his back, feeling each vertebra pop and settle back into place. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, waiting for the black spots to fade, for the words on the laptop to regain sharpness. Four hours of research and still nothing. The library smelled of lemon floor cleaner and the tacky plastic all the books were covered with to protect them from grubby hands - the combination was not helping the growing pain behind his brow. While it had a fair number of mythology books (children’s version, neutered and sterilized), it did not have a newspaper archive, microfilm or otherwise. Which made diving into local history a lot harder, despite the fantastic Wi-fi. Dean had taken one look at the bright blue, hard plastic chairs and suddenly found himself convinced that talking to the locals was the best bet they had. Sam couldn’t blame him, for once. He wondered, idly, how fast his brother had struck out with the waitress at the diner. He should get around to telling Dean that the “lost boy” act wasn’t really a good look on him these days. Between Hell and Purgatory Dean had become leaner, meaner, akin to a prowling cat in some urban jungle. Not as conducive to getting free pies as he had been when they were younger. He decided against it; this was funnier.

He fished out his phone and sent a quick text.

“ _No progress. Meet at the motel?_ ”

The answer came back less than a minute later,

“ _Sure. Finishing up here. Will bring grub._ ”

Sam put his laptop carefully back in his bag then piled the books and swept them off the table as he stood. He smiled to the girl at the desk as he brought her the books to be reshelved.

“Did you want to check anything out?”

“No. That’s all right, thank you”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Sam looked at her quizzically, it wasn’t a question he was quite used to.

“Well, you’ve been here for a long time and you kept looking up reference books. You look like you’re doing some research, but I don’t think it’s for Ms. Grady’s 5th grade class.”

Sam laughed.

“No, I didn’t get exactly what I was looking for, but thank you for asking.”

“What were you looking for? Other than half of our myths and legends section?”

“Hum, more like local legends?” Sam turned on the easy smile, the librarian looked barely over 18, but she was friendly and might be able to get him something for his time here.  “My brother and I, we try to collect local stories and roadside attractions. We’re planning on making a book about it one day” He shrugged a bit, trying to make it sound like a nice dreamy project “Gives me something to do anyways...”

“You want to hear about the labyrinth,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “It’s not in any of the books here, the story”.

She paused, looking at him as the silence stretched, awkward and syrupy, as she took in his appearance. The bruise-colored dark circles under his eyes, the pallor of his skin and the too sharp angles of his cheekbones. Sam felt like she was really seeing him, then trying to see into him. He was used to the kind of stare, Cas would do it all the time, but it still left him uncomfortable and fighting not to recoil away.

“You want to speak to old Mr. McGregor,” she said, at last. “He’s usually on the bench near the hardware store, if it’s not raining outside.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, smiling again to hide the confusion he felt.

“Tell him Karen sent you.” She smiled at him, but it was a bit sad. She took the books and stepped around him to go reshelve them before he could ask more questions.

***

Dean had been around the town once, to get a lay of the land. Town was too big a word for it really, it was more of a village, one main street with the few businesses lining it. The rest was stone built houses with flowers in the front and vegetable gardens in the back. There was a spread of newer construction on the east side, blocky and ugly in their modern bluntness. The town itself formed a lazy crescent around a hill. Anything further was farmland and grassy grazing land. Lambs and sheep, mostly, from what he’d seen.

The diner was perfect. Anonymous in the way of old school diners with vinyl seats, booths where the padding was crushed and shaped and molded to the regulars. The smell of suspended frying oil and strong coffee. Dean didn’t bother with the charm, he only did these days when Sam was around, to make him laugh. Mostly. He did smile at the waitress, however, and asked her to keep coffee coming his way. She nodded and smiled back, not pushing him. She knew he would order more when he got hungry. He took the folder from his file, the Men of Letters logo in faded indigo over the vanilla folder. The pages inside were yellow and brittle with age, the ink soft and faded in places. He started reading them again, mapping out the pattern he had started to see in the stories collected over the years by the scholars. From the bag he retrieved a pad of lined paper, yellow as well, but this one the angry yellow of poor product choices, the kind people had once referred as legal pads. And he started writing, shuffling the papers as he did, mapping the pattern.

Fear. Birth. Love. Healing. Death (sometimes), Lust… A cycle, There were holes in the stories, vast periods unobserved. But by pulling a few decades of reports it was there. Then it had stopped. Not just with the slaughter and the decay that followed Abbadon. Stopped as far as they could tell from doing research back in the Bunker. For a few decades. Then a young man, travelling but not a  tourist, had disappeared. It was very weak as far as leads went, and Dean wouldn’t have pursued it under normal circumstances. But it seemed a benign enough hunt, not too fast, nothing that indicated the presence of a bloodthirsty monster. Something safe (or as safe as hunting went) that would get both he and Sam out on the road. Keep them sane while they waited for more news from Kevin. For the last trial. And in that pattern, healing. Something maybe a bit too close to hope, but, maybe…

He snapped out of it somewhere around his 5th cup of coffee when his phone buzzed with Sam’s name in bright letters. He smiled and stretched, shoving the paperwork back in the folder, then the folder in his bag and the lined paper carefully over that. Then he met the waitress’ eye.

“Could I have a cheeseburger, some fries and the grilled chicken salad, to go?”

“Sure thing. But between you and me, the lamb burger is better. With rosemary in the meat and grilled onions and a garlic homemade sauce.”

“Why not, I’ll have that,” Dean said. He rose and walked to the counter, to pay so that he could leave as soon as the food was ready. Maybe he could goad Sam into eating more than a few bites - of either meal - if it was warm instead of tepid. It took a few minutes, but it was early, not yet meal time properly, so there were few other than him there. He wasn’t surprised when the waitress came back to chat with him as he waited.

“Are you a journalist?” she asked.

Dean snickered.

“No, I’m not. What made you think that?”

“The paper pad. You don’t strike me as a lawyer. A writer then.”

“Something like that.”

“Fiction?”

“Sometimes... “ Dean sensed there was more than idle talk in the questions. He was curious to see where she wanted to lead him and willing to follow for now.

“I had a friend named Bette. She would write long elaborate romance stories on pads like that. You don’t strike me as the romance type either.”

Dean laughed, but didn’t answer, not directly.

“What about Bette? Did she get her stories published?”

“She died. In a diner, across the country, many years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Nothing to be sorry about.” She paused. “Do you want one or two sets of utensils with that?”

Dean allowed the subject change with grace, he wasn’t a stranger to sudden redirections.

“Two. The salad if for my brother.”

“That’s nice. Is he bed bound, that you need to get the food to him?”

Dean’s smile cracked a bit, showing the pain, for a moment.

“No. Sick, but not… not yet.”

“Ah,” she said.

“We… we go around, and gather stories and local attractions and he reads the history and we see the sights and I get to drive and…”

“And just be?” she said.

“Yeah. Something like that”. The mask slipped back into place, the smile and the wink.

She wrapped his order in a brown kraft paper bag, with extra napkins and utensils. She added  two pieces of pie with a soft smile.

“I’ll see if I can get you a story. If you can come back tomorrow.”

He thanked her, slipped an extra bill for tip on the counter and walked back to the motel, trying to ignore the feeling of having been played.

***

The old man was sitting on a bench in front of the hardware store. He looked up (and up), blinked against the sun as his eyes focused and reached for Sam’s.

“Mr. McGregor?” Sam tried again. “Karen said…”

“To talk to me, if you wanted to know about the labyrinth.” He nodded. “And Mildred said I should go and meet with you.” That part was directed at Dean. “I guess this makes it easier.” He paused, just looking at them, his left eye runny and milky with age.

“So,” Dean asked, breaking the silence. “Can you tell us?”

“Yes,” the old man said. His voice was high and raspy. “But you might not like the telling. Or I could show you, tonight, if you want. But I think the two of you are not looking for the same thing.” He blinked at them again, trying to read something from them.  Sam was reminded of the girl in the library and shivered in the warm morning.  It was the middle of summer and, though it was early, the air was thick and heavy. Where the sun touched them it felt like a warm cloth or a blanket. Breathing was suffocating, like the inside of each lung being swaddled. Even the birds were quiet, lulled into sleep by the warmth. A single cicada sang, far away and lonely. When the old man spoke again, it was to Dean first.

“It can heal. But the healed have to walk it. You can't push him or guide him or choose the path for him. He has to want it.”

Then, to Sam he said.

“But sometimes it claims and demand and takes. In blood, in pain, in memories or in death.” He shrugged. “Come and see me tonight. Around 8. I will show you.”

***

The hunters slept the heat of the day away. Sam slept between bouts of coughing that Dean pretended not to hear.  Dean slept only after checking on his brother, covering his brow with cold rags that Sam would not mention.

They went over each other's notes and leads. Went over the ritual of checking and cleaning the arsenal, picking and choosing what to bring. Dean won the scuffle for the remote, so the TV was set on a grainy Spanish telenovela that brought back bittersweet memories of Rufus’ cabin and of Bobby. They were restless by 6. They walked to the dinner, their stride a bit longer, footsteps silent, falling into hunting mode. They ate in companionable silence (Sam had the soup with some crusty bread, Dean some contraption of roasted lamb cubes in a flatbread. The burger had been good ; he didn’t see why he wouldn’t trust Mildred’s word about the daily special).

At 8 they stood by the bench, in front of the hardware store. The heat was still there, but angry storm clouds were rolling in from the north. They would be upon the town soon. The old man joined them, leaning on a stick as he walked.

“Well then. Come on. It’s a bit of a hike.”

They made their way up the hill as the sun went down. They stopped, once or twice, for the tallest hunter to catch his breath. None of them spoke of it. The sunset painted the sky in indigo and peach and deep crimson as they walked. The old man talked, telling them the story of the labyrinth as the hill became steeper. Sam had the feeling the story was part of the ritual, or magic, or whatever power was behind this place.

The top of the hill was wide and flat. The labyrinth covered most of it, made of rosemary hedges 4 feet high, very dark in the falling night, but fragrant. The labyrinth was wide and intricate, in swirls and loops, a delicate design. The hedges were just high enough to hide the way to the center as the eye glazed over them. The paths were well defined, someone had poured crushed white stones on the ground of the paths, and the quartz in them caught the light of the rising moon. Sam realized with a start that between the trials and the exhaustion of the pain that followed he had somehow lost track of time.

“Dean,” he said, “is that…”

“A full moon, yeah” answered the older Winchester. “My timing sucks. I’m sorry Sammy.”

They realized that their guide was gone. But they could hear the shuffling of a large beast somewhere ahead of them. It’s voice floated to them.

“You can still get out of it alive.”

“Yeah yeah” Dean cut him off “Make it to the center and out with no mistake or hesitation. You said that twice.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Sam. But there was no fight in it. He remembered Dean in the hospital after the rawhead and the taser. He would have taken his chances in the night against the wolf then too.

Dean stretched his neck, making the bones pop. Then he smiled at Sam and winked. 

“Last one out buys the beer!” and ran. 

He ran through the entrance of the labyrinth and the night swallowed him. Sam felt the breath of the creature coming closer to him. Then he heard it land in the crushed stone and start stalking Dean. Sam followed. He would always follow his big brother.

The light of the full moon was bright, enough to navigate the white gravel paths between the rosemary. The smell of the plants kept reminding him of lamb, of meals shared. There were few memories, but he enjoyed them, as they passed. The labyrinth was doing something peculiar to his senses, narrowing them, making it harder to keep his awareness beyond the paths and the crossings and choices he was making. Or maybe that was the trials and how tired he felt, down to his bones.

He made it to the center. It was a nice, perfectly round area, with a fountain gently babbling. He took a drink. The moon was right above him and the water looked bright and silver in his hands. It tasted fresh and sweet. He turned back and started picking his way back to the entrance. The storm clouds reached them then, covering the moon and casting the labyrinth in darkness. He heard it then, the scream. At once his senses were back, he could hear the night sounds around him, the hoots of an owl and the chirping insects. The low growl of a large wolf. And Dean’s screams. Sam was familiar with pain and its sounds. This was not a scream of pain or of being hurt. This was a scream of torture or the memory of it. The hunter swore and took on running. Forking off his path and jumping over a few of the hedges, until he reached his brother.

Dean was curled on the ground in a fetal position, his face a mask of pain, eyes empty as streams of tears flowed and dripped onto the stones.

“Dean!” Sam reached for him, falling to the ground, pulling his brother unto his lap. He remembered having been in this position after the Cage. “I’m here. Right here. Come on. You got to come back”

“Such shadowy memories” came the voice. “We haven’t had any such as these in a long time. How _sweet_ , they taste.”

Sam saw it then, the large humanoid wolf, shy of six foot tall and covered in ink black fur. It’s claws and talons were sharp and glistened like oil. With practiced ease Sam reached for his brother’s gun and aimed it at the creature, while drawing the knife from the small of his own back, that arm looped around the semi-conscious hunter, defensive.

“The blade and bullets are silver,” said Sam.

It was not a threat, not really. Just a fact. The wolf creature that had been an old man smiled. Or perhaps it had always been a wolf, just wearing an old man’s skin to disguise its scent.

“There is no killing some things.”

Sam smiled, but it was not kind.

“Oh, I _know_.  But the interim is not pleasant. The silver will disrupt you. And I can burn this all down, salt the earth afterward. It might come back. But it will take time. And you will be weak.”

The wolf stopped his prowling.

“You could have walked out. You could have been _whole_ , hale and hearty.”

Sam shook his head, long strands of hair sticking to his face, in the sweat of both illness and exhaustion.

“No. I couldn’t.”

He held Dean closer, eliciting a mindless mumble from his brother.

The wolf started laughing, it echoed over the hills and under the stars. Then, with a jump, it was gone. Sam forced his brother upright, ducking under Dean’s arm so that he held most of his weight. He glanced at the moon (hidden under the clouds though it outlined them faintly) to get situated and chose a path. Step by step, he walked them out of the labyrinth.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews and comments welcome!


End file.
